BioMaths Colloquium Series – 2023/24
5 June 2024 – 1pm
Join us at 12:45 for coffee tea and biscuits
Wallace 218, Singleton Campus or Zoom (register here)
Prof Mike Gravenor with Gabriella Santiago
(Medical School, Swansea University)
Post-Pandemic RSV Seasonality and Susceptibility – A Welsh Modelling Perspective
Abstract:
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. lockdowns) implemented to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 also reduced the transmission and seasonality of other respiratory viruses. A rapid rebound of both influenza and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) was expected following the removal of NPIs. Here we will focus on the effects on Respiratory Syncytial Virus transmission and seasonality in Wales. We will present our RSV model, attempt to explain out-of-season outbreaks and compare our model projections with data from the 2023/2024 season. We will also describe how our model is used as the basis for RSV medium term projections (calculated on a regular basis for the Welsh Government).
Bios
Mike Gravenor is Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Swansea University. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, followed by a DPhil on malaria at the Department of Zoology, Oxford, in 1995. He took an MRC Fellowship to the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University and then joined a BBSRC modelling team led by Dame Angela McLean, FRS, during the BSE crisis. Mike arrived at the Swansea Medical School as a Senior Lecturer in 2003, and was appointed to a personal Chair in 2007. He has a long-standing interest in the application of mathematical models to infectious disease dynamics, having worked on measles, malaria, HIV, BSE, scrapie, influenza, dengue and RSV. Mike advised the Welsh Government on the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and is a current member of the Welsh Technical Advisor Cell and UK Scientific Pandemic Modelling Group for Infectious Diseases (SPI-M). His research also involves the analysis of large population health databases, in particular for cardiovascular epidemiology. Mike is the Head of the Department of Health Data Science at Swansea University Medical School. His teaching focuses on introducing basic statistical thinking.
Gabriella Santiago is a 2nd year DPhil student at Swansea University under the supervision of Professor Biagio Lucini and Professor Mike Gravenor. Her DPhil project focusses on developing mathematics-based epidemiological models of respiratory disease transmission in children in Wales. Prior to her DPhil, Gabriella studied for an MSc in Genomic Medicine and BSc in Population Health and Medical Sciences at Swansea University.